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Kyrie hit the aquarium door first, full lope, and rebounded back, shocked. Locked. The door was locked. The cat in whose mind Kyrie was couldn't understand it, even as Kyrie forced it to try to turn the knob. Until she felt a dragon claw rest, gently, on her shoulder, moving her aside.

The cat felt threatened and wanted to fight, but Kyrie was in control and she forced the body to step aside. And felt it recoil in terror and put belly to the ground and growl softly, as the dragon faced the door and opened his massive jaws, and let loose a stream of white-hot flame.

The door cracked. The outer lining of metal melted and ran. The inside layer of wood charred. The door fell inward, and Kyrie forced the great cat to leap in, over the smoldering door, and down a hallway, to where a door stood open with a seal ripped in two, and Kyrie lunged up the hallway, and loped up the stairs to the platform, in time to see . . . Rafiel, in human form, leaning over the railing and getting a push, and falling, falling headlong into the shark tank.

He made a sound of panic as he fell, and his shape blurred and changed. It was the lion that hit the water with a loud splash. The cover of the tank, removed, stood to the side.

A woman laughed, and turned to Kyrie. "I see. Why don't you join your boyfriend?"

Tom wanted to scream "No," but what came out of the dragon's mouth was a long, incoherent growl, as he rushed in, past Kyrie and almost past the woman on the platform.

The thought in his mind was that he must go and rescue Rafiel. He must. But he had a moment to think that if the woman stayed where she was, she might find a way to push Kyrie in. And he couldn't allow that, so he did what seemed all too logical to the dragon, and grabbed at the woman, pulling her in with him, as he plunged in after Rafiel.

The sharks hadn't started on Rafiel, who was trying to swim, his lion body quite adept at swimming, but not so much at reaching up to the edge of the tank lid and climbing out. He growled softly, whenever he tried and failed. And he looked—the human in Tom's dragon mind thought—very much like a drowned cat.

He thought all this as he plunged in, hitting the water with a great splash and going down-down-down, drawing a deep breath scented with what seemed like intoxicating perfume, and realizing he was breathing under water.

He came up beneath Rafiel, lifting him, pushing him up with his own body, till the lion's paws touched the edge of the opening, and then the dragon gave the lion a little shove, pushing him out.

And he felt a shark—skin rough as sandpaper—touch his back paw. Something from a nature program about sharks turning, or circling or something before biting crossed the dragon's mind, and the dragon did what came instinctively. It snapped downward and it bit at the shark. Hard. The shark flopped. Blood poured out. Other sharks rushed in.

Feeding frenzy, Tom's human mind thought and pushed, with all its might, at the dragon's body, impelling it, mind over matter, to the opening, its wings unfurling, half jumping, half flying out of the tank.

On the way he picked up the lion, who had been cowering on the edge of the tank where the covering rested, and lifted him all the way to the platform.

And before he could shift and talk or look around for Kyrie, he heard an unholy growl.

 

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Framed